The fall of the car market is slowing down – Business – Kommersant

The market for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles fell by 74.9% in July, according to the Association of European Businesses (AEB). Sales reduce the gap from last year’s results, but only due to a slight increase in the availability of Lada and state support for the brand’s cars. In general, there is a noticeable redistribution of leadership in the market from European and Japanese brands to Chinese ones, which entered the top 5 segment for the first time, but due to weak demand, none of the volume-forming brands showed sales growth.

Sales of new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles in July fell by 74.9%, to 32.4 thousand units, calculated in the Association of European Businesses (.pdf). It’s slightly better than the pace. June, when sales decreased by 82%, as well as more than the previous month’s sales in volume terms – then the market was 27.8 thousand cars. However, the market is still smaller in April, when at the beginning of the month there was still an active demand for cars (32.7 thousand sold cars), and much worse than the results of the crisis March (55.1 thousand units). The data does not include reports from BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Chery and its brand Exeed – they only report quarterly.

According to the results of January-July, the market fell by 60.5%, to almost 368.9 thousand units. The AEB has not commented on the statistics since the beginning of the crisis. The consensus forecast of analysts for the year is sales of 600,000 cars.

The crisis in the Russian market, in addition to the low level of demand, is associated with a logistical crisis due to hostilities in Ukraine and sanctions against this background, which together caused a shortage of supply.

Foreign brands, with the exception of Chinese and partially Korean ones, suspended production in the Russian Federation and deliveries of cars to the country at the end of February-March, and Russian concerns are experiencing problems with production due to a lack of components.

AvtoVAZ was able to resume full-fledged production only in June, and in July the government launched focused on supporting demand, in fact only on Lada, a program of preferential car loans. As a result of the sale Lada in July they were higher than in June, but still 68% lower than a year earlier (10.3 thousand cars).

The bestseller among foreign cars remains Korean Kia, the drop in sales of which is even deeper – by 77%, to 3.9 thousand units. Next comes Hyundai (3.4 thousand) and a group GAS (2.8 thousand), which reduced sales by 75% and 39%, respectively. And the Chinese Haval for the first time entered the top 5 of the Russian market, closing it, although it showed a negative sales trend – a drop by 33%, to almost 2 thousand cars. We note, based on the data of “Avtostat”, if there is in the rating Chery brandprobably, would take fifth line, replacing Haval.

European brands, which are traditionally in the top 10 of the market, now sell less than 1 thousand cars per month – for example, Skoda and Volkswagen; just left the Russian market Renault showed the implementation of 1.7 thousand cars. Japanese Nissan and Toyota and completely flew out of the top of the market.

Olga Nikitina